


Shared Tiredness

by Diary



Series: Dog Saved World [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alliances, Bechdel Test Fail, Canon-Typical Violence, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton Made a Different Call, Deaf Clint Barton, Disturbing Themes, First Meetings, Gen, Late Night Conversations, Male-Female Friendship, Natasha Romanov Joins SHIELD, Natasha Romanov-centric, POV Female Character, POV Natasha Romanov, Pre-Avengers (2012), Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-30 05:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6410692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diary/pseuds/Diary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>S.H.I.E.L.D, she has realised, is either grossly incompetent or brutal in how they dispose of unwanted agents. Complete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shared Tiredness

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own The Avengers.

She feels a pang when a wagging dog appears and knocks the agent’s cup of soda over.

He jumps slightly, looks over, and a grin crosses his face.

The pang disappears, and she files _fondness for dogs_ away.

“Hey, darling,” he greets. “You have a human?”

Petting the wiggling dog, he checks it for a collar. “I’ll find out if they have no-kill shelters. I’d offer to take you with me and say to hell with Coulson’s orders, especially after May brought in that turtle, but you’d do better with a kid or two, wouldn’t you?”

As he babbles about all the fun a child would provide the dog, she wonders, _Phil Coulson? American, former alphabet agency, domestic. May- Melinda May?_

What she knows of the latter makes his easy reference to a turtle odd. Agent May’s records and reputation don’t point to her being the type to bring in a stray, and she knows instinctively his tone wouldn’t be so easy if the turtle had been hurt or dead.

 _Find out if there’s been a change in code phrases_ , she decides.

She watches him picks up the cup, toss it into a nearby trashcan, stand, and whistle for the dog to follow.

…

Sighing in relief, she settles on a park across the restaurant he went in and massages her shoulders.

After three hours of walking, he’d finally found a shelter he deemed acceptable and spent another three hours filling out paperwork and buying toys, food, and water bowls for the rest of the animals there. Most of her time was spent sitting motionless in a vent with a lonely garden snake wrapped around her neck.

When the kinks in her shoulders and back are significantly loosened, she sinks down on the ground and does a few stretches.

As she’s kneading her feet, a feeling of change comes, and she looks up to see a few people hurriedly spilling out of the restaurant.

Withdrawing a scarf and tinted pink glasses from her pocket, she quickly covers her hair, slips the glasses on, and makes her way over.

Her first thought when she sees him breathing shallowly on the floor is, _I didn’t do that._

She does a quick inventory of her clothes and body as she mentally flips back during the day.

No, she didn’t bring any poison with her, and she didn’t somehow accidentally plant some on him or otherwise introduce it into his system. 

Then, she notices the little girl with an empty epi-pen stroking his hair.

Nearby, a waitress defends herself to the angry manager in their native tongue. “How was I to know he’s allergic? “Why would he order…”

The little girl scolds him, “You should have your own. What if I hadn’t been here?”

She’s not sure whether he understands or not, but his response is to smile, reach up, and gently tug a strand of the little girl’s hair.

…

 _S.H.I.E.L.D_ , she has realised, _is either grossly incompetent or brutal in how they dispose of unwanted agents_.

She’s not yet willing to rule out both.

Agent Clinton Francis Barton, codename Hawkeye, is a crack shot.

He’s also, if the last day and half is any indication, a hopeless idiot. Either they want him gone, or he’s able to fool them into thinking he’s not.

A small part wonders if he’s been aware of her presence and is drawing her into a trap. She made sure intel detailing her arrival two days from now was delivered to them, but if she’s wrong in her assessment of either him or them or both-

Records show him to be presbyopic.

When he first came into the city, did he see her watching from behind a newspaper on the bench in the train station? When he was babbling to the stray, did he see her past the branches of the trees she was hiding in? Did he catch a glimpse of her in the vents? In the restaurant, did he see past her scarf and glasses while he was lying shaking on the ground?

Her thoughts halt when he stumbles out of the bar.

She tries to calculate how much beer he could have drank in ten minutes, recalls what to do if someone is drugged, and wonders if he managed to yet again order something he’s allergic to but clearly not trained in avoiding.

 _Please_ , she finds herself thinking, _don’t die in the middle of the street._

If he does, she’ll set herself up as responsible. She’d just rather do it herself than have her continued survival be the result of an idiot’s inability to not order the wrong food.

As she follows him, however, something akin to relief washes through her when she realises he’s not drunk, drugged, or fighting against an allergic reaction.

He’s not even particularly stumbling, she notices. He’s walking slowly and carefully with his palm firmly against the wall.

_Did he get something in his eyes?_

…

An hour after he enters his hotel, she arms herself and crawls up the fire escape and onto his balcony.

The chairs and table usually found on such balconies have been replaced with a blanket and a mini-fridge full of soda and bottled water. She’s stayed away from the hotel, but she imagines he spends most of his free time sitting on the blanket with his legs between the railing, drinking and watching the city.

Picking the lock, she looks over in disgust when he doesn’t so much as twitch in his sleep.

Then, she notices two small, unidentified objects setting on the nightstand.

Closing the balcony door, she walks over and picks them up. They’re slightly spongy and match his skin tone. She finds a tiny black switch on the side and an opening in the back.

Setting them down, she picks up his cell phone and mutters in exasperation when she finds it unlocked.

He doesn’t respond, and she finds a text confirming her suspicions: _hearing gone req xtract_.

Digging out her own phone, she goes over to the balcony doors, sits down, and uses the moonlight to work.

An hour later, she’s found all the info S.H.I.E.L.D. has on the aids, and she slips out.

…

When she gets back, he’s changed positions but is still sleeping soundly.

It only takes her thirty minutes to get the aids to where they should be working properly.

Putting them and his phone back in the same spots and positions she found them, she leaves and firmly ignores the abrupt question, _Why am I doing this_ , when it pops into her head.

…

The extraction never comes.

…

When the time comes, she lets him find her in an abandoned building.

An arrow goes through her shoulder, and she shoots her gun.

After he drops to the ground, she strikes a match, drops it in the puddle of alcohol on the ground, and scrambles up a vent. As she crawls, she drops match after match into rooms with the puddles.

When she gets out, she looks at the burning building and finds her thoughts going towards phoenixes.

Scoffing at herself, she turns to walk away and finds herself buckling as an arrow pierces her leg.

She turns as best she can and finds the gun flying out of her hands with the arrow nicking her palm.

When he appears, he’s sooty and breathing somewhat shallowly, but everything is steady as he aims his bow.

The pain in her shoulder tells her the chance of her knives hitting him isn’t favourable, and the arrow would make contact before she could finish launching herself at him.

 _Okay_ , she thinks. _My death comes at the hands of a man who’s kind to strays and needs a child to save him from his own carelessness. I can live with this until the arrow does its work._

He studies her, and she forces herself not to curl up and look away.

“Any last requests,” he asks, and his voice is flat.

_I am not a stray. I am not an innocent child. I will not suffer his kindness._

If he could, he’d honour whatever she asked, she imagines. He’d track down some civilian she had a fondness for (because, of course, he has those and would expect someone like her to, too) or retrieve an animal she’d all but adopted. He’d make sure she was buried in a certain place, cremated, her organs donated, find a Russian orthodox priest to perform whatever rites necessary.

He might allow her to take out a knife and deprive him of the killing blow.

What she wants, she realises, is to ask him to take out his hearing aids. She’s going to try her damnedest not to scream, but if she does, she’d rather no one hear it.

He wouldn’t be enough of an idiot to risk lowering his bow to do so.

“No.” She stares at the arrow.

There’s a trickle of seconds, and then, there’s a slight waver in his stance.

_Smoke inhalation taking effect? Was he burnt somewhere? Did the bullet hit him?_

Lowering the bow, he keeps his fingers ready to release. “I can kill you, or you can come with me. Which do you prefer?”

“Death,” she immediately answers. “Without hesitation or doubt.”

Looking up at his face, she finds his lips are slightly quirked.

“Well, never let it be said I’m not masculine enough to be able to take brutal honesty,” he comments.

If he doesn’t hurry, she’ll take the knife out. However distasteful she finds suicide, this, she decides, is worse.

“Your file says that you value your life above anything else,” he says.

She shrugs with her non-injured shoulder.

Vaguely, she can remember the feelings of protectiveness she once held. She’d lie, steal, cheat, torture, and kill in order to ensure she kept breathing.

Until now, she’s never stopped to examine when it changed, but she thinks it was probably when she watched the last breath leave a certain child. The child was a few years younger than the girl in the restaurant, and she doesn’t know whether it was a boy or girl. After taking life, she had felt it’d be going a step too far to go anywhere near the child’s cloud-printed sweatpants.

She’s killed innocent people of all ages and never let herself think of them as anything but  _sometimes, collateral damage is unavoidable_ , but until then, she never found herself near enough to watch them struggle for breath.

“Alright,” he says.

Puzzled, she watches him withdraw the arrow and slip it back into the quiver on his back.

“You owe me. I need to go that way.” He jerks his thumb behind him. “I could have killed you. I didn’t. Return the favour.”

Before she can ask what makes him think she has such honour, he’s already turning and walking away.

…

As she cleans and bandages her wounds, she tries to fit everything together in her head.

When she was young, she was taught, in the event of capture, to say, _My survival depended on doing what I was told._

However, when she learned of how badly something similar called the Nuremberg defence worked for most of those who utilised it, she readjusted her training.

_Would it have worked for him? Does he believe I’m a victim who will take this second chance?_

He hadn’t offered her a second chance, however. _I didn’t kill you when I had the chance, don’t kill me when you do_ , were his almost exact words.

She doubts it was her beauty. If she were a dog with matted hair and an ugly face, she can imagine he might dote on her even when it was pointed out she took human lives, but even with his carelessness bordering on idiocy, she doesn’t think a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who was almost burned alive and shot at would successfully bring a hostile down, and then, decide said hostile’s physical attractiveness warranted walking away.

Or at least, they wouldn’t if they didn’t think they’d receive sex in exchange.

After she’s bandaged, she goes for a walk and suddenly finds herself standing underneath his balcony.

Letting out several vicious curses, she climbs up the fire escape.

…

When he comes out of the bathroom in a towel and wielding a straight edge razor, she finds herself thinking, _Oh, thank the Gods, he does have some sense._

“Uh, okay,” he says. “I guess I should have clarified: Don’t seek me out, and I won’t-”

“Why did you spare me?”

He shrugs. “Don’t get any ideas.”

Before she can ask, he sets the blade down and starts changing out of the towel and into his underwear and a pair of sweats.

When she broke in the first time, he was sleeping shirtless, and she wonders if the sweatshirt is a measure against her getting ideas.

Strapping his holster and gun on, he grabs his bow and quiver and sits down on one of the balcony chairs.

She watches him draw the bow and aim.

“I’m not supposed to ask about last requests. But I have to. Most people answer ‘no.’ And like you, most of them do have one.” Sighing, he looks at her with tired eyes. “I guess you just caught me on the right night. You can be someone else’s problem. Someone else can wonder why you do what you do and if there’s anything redeeming about you and if your blood on the ground is really worth anything. Taking out people like you, it’s supposed to make the world a better place, but the number of people like you never gets any smaller.”

“Did you order that dish on purpose?”

He jerks slightly, and she breathes out when the arrow isn’t released. He looks at her for a long moment, and then, laughs.

When he stops, he shakes his head and keeps his eyes on her face. “My accent is horrible, and I can read the language better than I understand it. I asked the waitress about the ingredients, and based on what I thought she said, I thought it was safe. Those pictures they put on the menu aren’t really that helpful."

Something inside her relaxes, and she knows this isn’t good.

“Still, it seems as they should send someone who isn’t-”

“I’m not depressed,” he insists. “I’m just- I’m very good at this particular skillset.”

From what she’s seen, he is indeed masculine enough he can admit to incompetence on his own part without excuse. For him to jump automatically to depression- someone else has already expressed such concerns, she knows. And his defence was likely the same as it now: defend his skills.

If he can do his job, there’s nothing wrong inside him, and if she thought he truly believed this, she’d tell him in detail how her own experience has disproven this.

“You let me live because you were tired,” she retorts.

It’s mild enough he simply shrugs. “Happens to even the best.” His tone takes on air of amused offence as he continues, “Fury, my director, he talked my ear off about not being seduced. Apparently, you widows are good at that. I’d be offended, but hell, maybe I just really want to say, ‘well, I saw her, she was beautiful, but that wasn’t the reason I failed.’”

“I don’t think so,” she replies.

He smiles. “You have a cause?”

“I have a very particular skillset,” she answers.

“Ain’t what I meant,” he says. “You know mine. I want to make the world a better place. If that means killing people instead of protecting them, so be it. What’s your reason for killing?”

“You protect people by killing."

She says it before she can think, and it comes out more comforting than she likes.

Based on his frown, he agrees.

“Life is life,” he declares, and his tone is sharp. “With animals, there can be a good reason. With people-” He inhales and exhales slowly. “You believe in God? I’m not sure I do, but I do believe in souls. Every life I’ve taken stains my soul, and it doesn’t matter how many innocent people benefit from it. Those stains will never, ever go away.”

“But you’re not depressed.”

“I made my peace a long time ago.”

“Then, why didn’t you take the shot? If you believe my soul to be stained with unremovable red, why are you letting me go out to kill more people? If I kill even one person while a different S.H.I.E.L.D. agent is trying to finish your job, that innocent person will be another stain on your own.”

“No,” he says.

“No?”

“No,” he repeats. “I should have killed you. I didn’t. You didn’t try to kill me, so, our debt continues until one of us breaks it. Those people I kill- I don’t give a damn about their souls. They pose a threat to innocent people and can’t be contained. So, I kill them. If they could be contained, or if I believed they were going to stop hurting innocents, nothing could force me to take the shot.”

Leaning back, he gives her a piercing look. “I’m American. In America, we sometimes give citizenship to former child soldiers. They have to look at pictures of their victims, watch documentaries about what they did, all sorts of stuff. Then, they’re told its not their fault. They have to say it back until someone believes that they might someday believe it.”

“Is there a point to this,” she asks.

“Yes.”

She stays silent.

“Maybe they don’t have stains like I do, or maybe theirs can be wiped away. I don’t know much about the Red Room or the KGB. Never wanted to. I don’t know if you’re like them or if you’re just as bad as the people I wish I could bring myself to shoot in the eye socket.”

His eyes catch hers. “If no one ever told you, you do have a choice. You can stop. You can find people to help you. I hope you believe me, but whether you do or not, I’m not responsible for any lives you take.”

 _You will be_ , she thinks.

This thought doesn’t scare her as much as, _And I’ll make sure you never think of it in those terms. The red I have will be stained over with the red I keep from touching you._

Part of her hesitates.

“I believe in deities above,” she says. “But not in the way most theistic people believe in gods and goddesses.”

There’s nothing particularly special about this man. She’s met countless people who love strays, and there have been people in the past who showed her truly altruistic kindness.

_He saved me, and if need be, I can always extract myself._

The thought calms her, and standing, she looks him in the eyes. “I do believe you. Now, you owe me a debt. Put the arrow down.”

“I don’t think so.”

She waits.

After five minutes, he sighs, groans, and sets the bow and arrow down.

As he’s rubbing his face, she strips down to her underwear.

He jumps, and several expressions play across his face.

“Don’t get any ideas. I’ll keep my bra on.”

“Okay,” he agrees. “Wh-”

Removing the holster, she tugs his sweatshirt off. “There’s no couch, and I don’t trust you on the floor any more than you’d trust me on it. You’re tired? Then, let’s sleep. We’ll see if you’re willing to use your particular skillset in the morning.”

“Alright,” he says with a sense of helplessness. “You’ve been in my room before, haven’t you?”

She slips into the bed. “Do you know any form of sign language?”

The look he gives her is almost awestruck, and she bites down the urge to remind him he’s not supposed to be seduced by her.

“Yeah. American. ASL." He slides on top of the covers. “You?”

“No.” Pulling the sheets out from under him, she brings them up to his shoulders. “Maybe you can teach me.”

He doesn’t take out his aids but does turn off the lights.

She hums to herself, and when he rolls onto his stomach and sprawls out with his breathing coming easy and steady, she rearranges his arm and wraps hers around him as best she can.

…

In the morning, there’s the sound of movement, and she finds guns trained on them.

“Oh, crap,” he mutters. Pushing her away and refusing to let her arm come up, he puts his hands up and stands in her line of fire. “Okay, this looks bad.”

“This looks bad,” a male voice repeats. “This looks- We came in expecting to find your dead body, Clint.”

Rolling her eyes, she stands up on the bed with her hands up. “I was a child when the Red Room took me and a young woman when the KGB recruited me. Agent Barton said I had a choice, now. You can contain me. That’s why he didn’t kill me.”

“Hawkeye,” the voice asks.

“It’s a little more complicated, but can we just go with that for the minute? C’mon, Coulson,” he pleads. “I haven’t been compromised.”

There’s a sigh. “Where are her clothes?”

…

After her weapons have been confiscated, she’s allowed to relieve herself and get dressed in the bathroom with a female agent watching her. When she’s handcuffed and brought out, Barton waves the agents approaching on both sides of her away and places one hand on her arm and the other on the small of her back. “Thanks,” he murmurs.

“Don’t ever make the mistake of trusting me,” she quietly warns him. “As far as I’m concerned, my debt was paid when I didn’t throw a knife at your back last night.”

Grinning, he nods.

…

One of the agents sits down outside of her cell.

“So, do you understand how we found you and Agent Barton looks?”

“His sexual preferences aren’t on any files I’ve been able to find,” she answers. “Would it have looked more innocent if we were the same gender?”

He smiles slightly at her. “We don’t ask that of our agents or our prisoners. I trust Barton. He says neither of you trusted the other on the floor and no sexual advances were made on either side. But I also know people’s versions of things can sometimes be unintentionally biased in their own favour.”

“His version isn’t,” she replies.

“Why are you here, really?”

She considers her words.

“He talked about souls last night,” she finally says. “I don’t believe in the concept. But everyone has a- let’s say ledger. His soul is stained with red, and so is my ledger. He doesn’t think the stains can be wiped out. I don’t know if they can or not, but-”

She leans back. “He was tired last night. I’ve been tired for a long time. Does the fact, if I could, I’d like to wipe mine clean mean anything? I didn’t get around to asking him.”

“Yes,” he answers, and it strikes her how soft and sincere his voice is. “Yes, it means something. Always.”

“If it can’t, I’d settle for staining it red in the cause of good."

He nods. “What do you mean when you say he was tired?”

She wonders if this agent is the one who first raised the subject of potential depression.

Her only hope, and possibly Barton’s, is to acknowledge there’s something but make them believe it’s easily fixable.

“He could have killed me. I didn’t plead with him or give him any reason to think I should be spared. But something made him decide not to. He should have someone to look over him before he gets himself killed or worse.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “We’ve tried. But he’s good enough that giving him a partner has never worked the way it should.”

“I’m better."

He chuckles. However, his tone is serious when he says, “We can keep you prisoner, or we can try to make you an asset for our side. But if your only reason for being here is an attachment to one agent- That isn’t a good reason for anyone.”

She thinks of the nameless, genderless child.

“Sometimes, collateral damage is unavoidable,” she says. “That’s what I believed when innocent people died at my hands. I’m sure some of the people I actively set out to kill would be considered innocent by your standards. Recently, something changed. It wasn’t him. It was a child. It changed, but I kept utilising my particular skillset. I could have left when he didn’t release that arrow, but I didn’t. You’d be stupid to trust me, and he’d be the idiot I originally thought him to be if he did. And with all respect, you can try to make me an asset for your side, or I can be gone very soon.”

“With all this on record by my own words, I won’t blame you if you don’t give me the chance. But I think you want to, and I think you’ll blame yourself if you don’t. So, decide,” she finishes.

Nodding, he stands. “Stay around for a few more hours, at least.”

“Okay."

…

“Hey.”

She looks up from her book.

Barton nods to a guard, and the bars slide open.

After he comes in and the cell’s shut, he lifts her legs up, sits down, and puts her feet on his lap. “Fury will be here tomorrow. Want me to sleep in here tonight?”

“There’s no need,” she answers.

“Want to start learning ASL?”

Closing her book, she sets it aside but keeps her feet where they are. “Yes.”

He makes motions with his fingers. “This is your name.”

She imagines it isn’t. “I’m Natasha Romanov.”

His hands begin to work, and smiling, he says, “It’s nice to meet you, Natasha Romanov. I’m Clint Barton.”

She begins copying the motions. “It’s nice to meet you.”


End file.
